Senior Legal Counsel

Here at N Brown, we champion inclusivity by making our customers look and feel amazing. We help our customers to express themselves with stylish products, helpful services and flexible finance.

 Working here you’ll explore everything the world of digital retail has to offer — asking questions, trying new things and chasing new opportunities. Combine this curiosity with the freedom to make your own decisions, take charge of projects and work flexibly, and you’ve got the perfect place to show your skills and learn new ones. So, if you collaborate, think on your feet, embrace innovation and love rising to a challenge, your work with us will have a serious impact on the business, your career and our customers’ lives. We are proud to be N Brown.

A bit about the role:

 The Legal team here at N Brown is growing and we are looking for a Senior Legal Counsel to join us at our Head Office in central Manchester. This is a fantastic opportunity to join a high-performing team in a busy, agile and fast-moving digital retail business. You will deal with a variety of retail-focussed, commercial legal issues and support all our brands and business areas.

As Senior Legal Counsel you will play a key role in assisting N Brown to meet its strategic goals and purpose by working pro-actively with business stakeholders to understand and mitigate legal risks, provide the right legal advice and assist business stakeholders to make fully considered commercial decisions as cost effectively as possible. As Senior Legal Counsel you will report directly to our Head of Legal.

The role offers exposure to all parts of the business with the opportunity to expand your legal skills in a variety of areas (such as intellectual property, IT, advertising, data and privacy, and dispute resolution/litigation), with a focus on Consumer Credit, Financial Services and Regulated Activities, whilst making a real difference to our business.

What you’ll do:

• Act as a business partner and take a lead role on advising, drafting and negotiating high value and business critical commercial contracts and firm-wide projects as they may come up.
• Advise on a wide range of Legal areas as part of day-to-day duties, such as: general commercial; IT; IP; marketing / advertising; consumer (including advising on / drafting consumer facing T&Cs, promotions, credit, etc); and data protection / GDPR.
• Take ownership of specific Consumer Credit, Financial Services and Regulated Activities workstreams to support Head of Legal and free-up time for specific responsibilities.
• Focussed development of leadership and management skills with responsibility for supervision and mentoring of junior members of the Legal team.
• Take a lead role on the development and implementation of new initiatives to improve competence, effectiveness and productivity of the Legal team within the business.
• Coordinate and manage external Legal advisors, ensuring efficiency, value for money and mutual advantage.
• Keep up to date with future legislation and regulatory changes and proactively identify and update the business on risks and implement changes and solutions to mitigate them where necessary.
• Support the Head of Compliance with respect to Consumer Credit Act and FCA Rules compliance and other Financial Services and regulated activity related enquiries.
• Assist with the design and delivery of training and updates to various business areas on regulatory and legislative matters and best practice in areas such as consumer rights and data protection.

Who you are:

• Qualified solicitor with 4 - 8 years PQE
• Strong commercial contract drafting and negotiation experience
• Financial Services and Consumer / Retail Credit knowledge and experience (e.g.: experience with FCA Regulations, Consumer Credit Act, SMCR)
• Data Protection knowledge and experience would be helpful but not essential
• Strong written and verbal communication skills (including legal drafting)
• Team player with a positive “can do” attitude
• Ability to work autonomously under pressure in a fast-paced digital environment
• Organised and able to manage own workload and prioritise tasks accordingly

Your Benefits:

• Competitive bonus scheme – we reward you when we succeed
• Company pension scheme which we’ll match up to 5% and if you put in 6% we’ll contribute 8%.
• Life Assurance
• You’ll receive 24 days plus bank holidays. Your holiday entitlement increases with length of service and you’ll have the option to purchase an extra 10 days per year.
• Amazing colleague discount scheme across all our brands
• And loads more! For more info  https://www.nbrowncareers.co.uk/why-join/your-benefits

Employees in our business may have access to our customers’ personal data therefore for a number of our roles, offers of employment are subject to a satisfactory criminal record check. Having a criminal record will not necessarily prevent an individual from obtaining a position with N Brown Group.